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Sangoisse

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Sea Gorgons

Sangoisse

“Betty, look! That mask! That has to be the creature with the wonderful singing voice those sea angels told us about! Look! It's coming out of the waaaaAAAARGH” — Eveidence presented by Complainant A, in case #82413 - Coast The Most Resorts vs Three Seas Tours

Attributes

Physical Description

Sangoisse are hulking many-limbed crustaceans with exoskeletons composed entirely of stony coral. Their heads are framed by a masklike arrangement of orange branching coral, partially shielding their mane of black mussels. Their tails are overgrown with tube sponges and soft corals, forming an unwieldy train the sangoisse drags behind it.

Fine pink hairs can be seen fluttering between the joints of the sangoisse's carapace and dangling from what can be presumed to be the creature's mouthparts; these, along with the soft corals on its tail, continuously leak seawater.

Behavior

Left to their own devices, Sangoisse are content to drag themselves across seabeds, sifting through sand and filtering out food particles. They will travel in a straight line for many hundreds of miles as long as there is no obstruction and seem irritated when forced to turn themselves around and face a new direction when blockaded by a cliff. They do, however, tolerate (or not notice) being gently steered in large circles by a cable wrapped around one foot or the like, which makes the threat they pose to coastal settlements manageable. Their ability to rapidly grow coral earns them particular respect among populations who rely on reefs and atolls for habitation or economic prosperity. Thanks to their disregard for small animals swimming around it or sheltering about its growths, sea angels are ideal close-range handlers and wranglers of these beasts.

The exoskeleton steadily builds up and encrusts over the sangoisse's lifespan, until its joints are coralled-over and the creature is rendered immobile. In suitable climes, they may even be the source of a new reef. Trained handlers extend the working lifespan of their sangoisse by abrading away a little coral each day, just enough to avoid the sangoisse's ire.

Subspecies

None.

Special

Coral Chorale: The mussels of a sangoisse's mane produce a beautiful melody when the creature is fully submerged, but the sound becomes a shriek when exposed to air. This noise accelerates the growth of polyps in the seawater the sangoisse endlessly generates while exposed, irreversibly transforming the terrain around the sangoisse into sharp coral. The resulting coral will leak polyp-laced seawater of its own for up to an hour after sprouting, resulting in almost cancerous growth on landscapes if the sangoisse ends up lingering in the area.

Trivia

• Sangoisse life cycles are poorly understood, but by recording and extrapolating the movement of sangoisse and studying ocean currents, the current consensus is they are an anthozoan parasite which infects a variety of deep-ocean decapods. Variations in body plan in second- or third-generation sangoisse released to other planets' oceans supports this hypothesis.

• Several cultivars of sangoissse mussel have been successfully bred to live and sing independently of the creature, and are a popular if highly restricted addition to aquariums.

• Swimming with open wounds in areas of known sangoisse activity is a particularly painful kind of death wish; if the cut is infected with polyps and the sangoisse's scream reacts with them, a victim's flesh will rapidly turn to coral.